The Million Man Migration
A plan to return this country to Democracy
If the United States chose its leaders in free and fair elections, there is no doubt that the Republican party would be firmly out of power. That’s because they’re not very popular, and haven’t been for more than 2 decades. The cynic in me ascribes their lack of popularity to a lack of ideas that make people’s lives better. I mean, they’ve had - what - 12 years to come up with an alternative to ObamaCare and still, nothing?
Jeff Spicoli could do better.
In fact, the Republican ticket has lost the popular vote in six of the last seven presidential elections, and their loss margins are getting bigger: the GOP lost the 2000 popular vote by over 500,000, the 2016 election by nearly 3 Million, and the 2020 election by more than 6 million. The Republicans only win national elections by winning the quixotic Electoral College, and maintain relevance only through gerrymandered state and national congressional districts, and by exploiting the disproportionate power differentials in the Senate. And because each state sends two senators to Washington, regardless of state population, the states with tiny populations get as many senators as California or New York.
That means that a Senator in Wyoming represents about 400,000 Americans while a Senator in California represents about 20 Million. In fact, Democratic senators represent 41,549,808 more people than the Republican half.
And still, each Senator gets one vote.
OK so this is not news to anybody, but it seems like something we should be able to do something about. And as it happens, I have an idea: I call it the “Million Man Migration”.
It involves the relocation of 900,000 voters (voters with flexible or geographically agnostic jobs, bored people, retired hippies) from reliably blue and solidly red states (California, Massachusetts, and New York on the blue side, Mississippi, Oklahoma, Alabama and Arkansas on the Red) and about 100,000 from Washington DC (because their votes don’t count for shit) to the following states in sufficient numbers to flip 10 reliably Red Senate Seats to Blue:
Wyoming, Alaska, both Dakotas, and Montana.
Based on the most recent Senatorial election data, relocating reliably democratic voters to those five states would require the following diaspora (Demaspora?) to flip them reliably blue. This very crude analysis involved taking the largest total number of votes received by a Senatorial candidate on the Republican side, juxtaposed against the lowest number of votes earned by a Democrat. This got our basic party differential. Frankly, I was surprised how close these races actually were:
And since Senate elections take place every six years, these people don’t need to move right away. We can stagger the relocations to coincide with the Senate contest we’d like to influence, and then of course they could move away after the election (because who wants to live in North Dakota?), or stick around and make the locals go completely cuckoo bananas. Moreover, if we can convince progressive SuperPACs to allocate $15B over 6 years to this exercise, we could offer $15,000 relocation packages to every single one of these intrepid warriors for democracy.
But wait, why are we doing this?
Because we can own the Senate forever, that’s why.
And because after this Migration we would control every single Supreme Count nominee for the rest of history, that’s why.
And with that kind of permanent margin we can abolish the filibuster and dismantle the electoral college, codify the Voting Rights Act, create a system of national voter registration, and work towards a Constitutional guarantees of reproductive rights, marriage equality, health care, and paid parental leave.
That, my friends, is how we get back to democracy. We just need to move a million people.